Seashells
by Ker-rin
Summary: I'M BACK! A sad little after hogwarts fic by me...very "different"...one of my favorites...worth a look...and a review....if all goes well maybe i'll stay this time r/r please?


Hair pulled back, straightened, dyed blond, eyes in green contacts, not the brilliant green of her former lover but a dark dull gray that showed even less emotion then the dull face. Yes, behind the piles of makeup no color showed through her face, no matter how much blush the girl applied.  
  
That was her cross to carry in life, she thought with a sigh, an eternal colorless face to go along with colorless life.  
  
Oh, there had been color in her face ages ago, back when she was with her green eyed lover, but those days was long gone leaving her only with emotional and spiritual scars that would never ever heal.  
  
Below her brilliantly false face were worn robes, the same robes she had worn the last time she had seen her lover. The contrast of the newness of her face and the aging robes always puzzled her young coworker.   
  
He stared intently at her, as if remembering a ghost of a memory. Alas, not even a true memory but it's ghost, it's shadow.  
  
Memory was something which taunted the young boy with an extremity no other challenge could ever cause his psyche. In essence he had no true memory. Amnesia, the loss of thought had effected him, as so many others, after the fall of the dark lord.  
  
Maybe there had been an accident, he often pondered. Or maybe he just didn't want to remember. As much as he wished to believe that his illness was heroic, as if perhaps he had taken a bad shot in the head to save some poor victim of Voldemort's but somehow he knew that the other possibility was much more likely.  
  
He sighed and continued a short staring spell at the girl in the booth across from him. her face was so sullen, yet hopeful, as though she was waiting....waiting for something.  
  
We're all waiting for something, he thought bitterly, eyes once again alerted to watching his booth intently.  
  
He did not again think of the terribly false girl until lunch hour. He had been sitting eating his dry sandwich when he felt a light, ever so gentle touch. It felt as though the touches's owner was frightened. He felt a familiar quibble in it's owner's hand that he felt in his own when he was questioned of his past.  
  
He turned his head, not knowing what to expect, and his gaze was met with the two false eyes of the girl. The mysterious girl he had longed to talk to so many millions of hours, and now here she was tapping him on the back and he felt his mouth dry and his tongue speechless.  
  
"Is this seat taken?" She said with a voice full of innocence, innocence as false as the green in her eyes. She smiled a smile. Oh, it could have been a sweet smile, if smiled by anyone else, but by her the smile was fake and unreal and the young man shuddered and felt the hair's on his neck fly up, goosebumps filing up his arms.  
  
"No-o" The boy stammered, half from fear and half from shock.  
  
"Good," She said, she stood up and walked away, leaving as quickly as she had come.  
  
Sitting there, alone again, the boy pondered the last minute's events, and shrugged, and stared bluntly at his food, and resided to eating it in loneliness.  
***  
  
Lunch time came and went and so did the work day and so did the sun but yet the sun had risen again and work had started and he found himself sitting alone, rejected once again by his coworkers.  
  
A presence was felt above him and his heartbeat with excitement, he felt more anxious then he could ever remember, which wasn't saying much.  
  
The presence sat down next to him and he turn around hoping to see the dull green eyes he had learn to obsess over. Yet there in his line of vision was his boss.  
  
"You've been distracted lately in your work lately, Mr...." he paused and it occurred to the young man his own boss did not even know his name.  
  
"You have a very important job, Mr...." He let out a fairly obvious cough and the young man couldn't help wondering what his boss meant by "important." Important? he asked himself sardonically, Packing potions all day is is important? It's more important to be a beggar in front of the leaky Cauldron, at least they add to the atmosphere.  
  
"Mr. What Mr. Longbottom? Can't finish the statement." The chubby man blushed a deep red and moved away in a huff of heavy breathing.  
  
The young man smiled to himself, he knew he would not get fired for his last statement as he was both right and more intimidating then Mr. Longbottom, who was viciously frightened by him.  
  
He chuckled to himself, a little loud then any sane person would but then again was he really sane?  
  
  
-  
Across the crowded room a girl sat alone. She watched the events of the boy's conversation with the big boss and grinned, bemused.  
  
He had spirit the boy, like her lover had. She smiled at the very thought of her lover.  
  
She sighed and walked away from the scene. She didn't belong here.  
  
She belonged with her lover. yet he was dead now, wasn't he. Could she be sure, she had never really heard of his death.  
  
Perhaps, just perhaps, he didn't want to see again. This was understandable. She had been very ugly then. Not like the beautiful offspring of makeup and hairdye she currently resided as.  
  
Yes, if he saw her now he would love her. So she would wait, with her pretty hair and perfect makeup, until he came. And he would come, wouldn't he?  
-  
Neville Longbottom was a very successful man. He had made is fortune in a very coincidental meeting between him and a high power lawyer. The lawyer, a handsome young man that looked strangely familiar from a different time in his life, had become quite a Casanova with the ladies.  
  
Unfortunately, sometimes ladies were hard to find, so Draco went to some desperate measures. I will leave with just this information, and you can take it however like, as there are several ways.  
  
Neville had encountered young Draco on one such occasion. ever since then, Draco, on fear of being found out, was quite friendly to Neville. Now you will remember that Draco was a very high power lawyer. It was quite convenient that Neville was currently suing the nest of kin in the Crouch Clan for damages against his family, as he father had just died in the mental hospital, an untimely death caused by their cousin Barty Jr.  
  
  
So Draco pulled some strings and a very large settlement was awarded to Mr. Longbottom. Things started to look up, he married a Hannah Abbot, a pretty blond Hufflepuff. He bought the business that our young hero is employed in.  
  
Life was all very good for Neville after that.  
  
Except for one thing.  
  
His business's mainstay was a large wizarding good shop in Diagon Alley.  
  
Next to the store was a very unfortunate neighbor.  
  
A joke shop.  
  
Constantly pranks were being pulled on his shop. Fireworks exploded in his merchandise, food was substituted with odd creations that made tongues enlarge and purple gas to pass through someone's head.  
  
But other then that life was good.   
  
Except for that damn "Wizard Wheezes" shop.  
-  
  
Now as we return to the story of our hero I must notify you of the changes in time.  
  
First off, a week has passed and our Hero has not had a shave or a bath in this time. Not like you really needed to know.  
  
Second off, He has just been notified that his job is to be terminated as of Friday. He has no money saved and no family to goto, he will starve.  
  
Yet he does not care.  
  
He sits dully around the table eating his last lunch in the canteen.  
  
Today will be like every other day, but it will be his last.  
  
He does not mean work.  
  
He will take his life tonight.  
  
Movement! He sits up suddenly. He feels movement behind him. Someone is standing there.  
  
"'Take it this sit still isn't taken," Says the sweet voice of the made up girl.  
  
He nodded as the girl smiled and sat down.  
  
"Well, handsome, you look lonely."  
  
Handsome, he thought quickly, why was she flirting with him?  
  
"Just to let you know, I don't have a single dime on me," He said bluntly. Silently he kicked himself.  
  
"I'm not a gold digger, Mr...." The girl said. The boy sighed, he got this a lot.  
  
"Just call me Mister." He said with a dull shrug.  
  
"Works for me." She said. There was silence.  
  
Mister concentrated solely on his stale bread and contaminated water.  
  
"Why does someone as handsome as you sit all alone everyday?" Asked the girl.  
  
"Are you trying to seduce me?" He said, cracking his first smile all week.  
  
"Maybe." She said, with a wisp of platinum hair and a wink of her green eyes.   
  
She disappeared and he was alone again.  
  
All alone.  
  
And so his last day came and went, just like any other day only with an even more bitter note sadness in his eyes and a resigned look pasted to his face.  
  
He might as well be dead. Yet the young man was haunted by the mere memory of the short conversation with girl. She mesmerized him, caused him to feel desire.  
  
She had seduced him, just fine, with nothing but a flirtatious comment a wisp of her hair he was hooked to her like a bee to Honey.  
  
Just like she had wanted.  
  
_  
  
If our hero's name is to be Mister, I suppose it is only suitable that our heroine's name shall be Missy. So now I shall tell you just a piece of the pie known as Missy's mind.  
  
Missy had become very accustomed to getting her way. That's what blond hair and green eyes got you. Life came very easy to Missy now, but it hadn't always been that way.   
  
See a very long time ago, Missy was very very in love with a man. You know this man simply as Lover. So she loves Lover (ironic, isn't it?) but Lover doesn't care for her. So Missy here creates her own little world. Missy was a little weird, but aren't we all? The human race is very odd. Millions of dollars fly out of our pockets and into psychiatrist's hands every year. So who am I to pass judgment.  
  
Well, Missy creates this world where Lover is her lover and she's beautiful. She wasn't a great beauty you see, oh she was pretty, she could get guys, but never him. Never ever the man she wanted.  
  
Poor Missy.  
  
But in her little world she and Lover were in love. They were going to get married and leave a perfect dream life.  
  
But nothing is perfect. Not even in dreams.  
  
I suppose part of Missy realized this, so she, like a great soap opera she was, wrote Lover off into the war of Voldemort. In fact, the real Lover did goto war. Soon Missy found herself lonely for Lover. I suppose she went insane. But in a way she already was insane, yes, but as mentioned above, we are all insane, some of us just hide it better then others.  
  
Missy's greatest mistake was being sane for just that one minute. She was looking into the mirror and she saw herself there, not the beautiful girl who was marrying Lover at the end of the war. No, she saw herself, all plain and homely.  
  
Needless to say, Missy freaked. She kicked the mirror until she couldn't see herself anymore. She scarred herself up with the glass real bad, almost died.  
  
Some other shell of a person found her.  
  
"What happened here?" He said in a distant voice to her, back on that fateful autumn night.  
  
She shrugged and moaned.  
  
"That looks bad." He said, but he just stared past her. He wasn't looking at her, he was looking through her, he didn't see that she was dying.  
  
But in a way Severus Snape was dead himself.  
  
-  
Years ago, during Harry Potter's fourth year Voldemort was brought back to power. All his death eaters returned to him.  
  
Except for two.  
  
One of ran away. And the other man was Snape.  
  
Voldemort vowed that night to kill them both.  
  
You might say by the way I spoke of Snape before that he had failed, but trust me, he hadn't.  
  
He had killed Snape's spirit.  
  
Only the body survived.  
  
Snape was a shell.  
  
So therefore he isn't truly the Snape you know and love.  
  
So from here on out Snape shall be referred to as Shell.  
-  
  
Shell took Missy in. He was kind to her, but Missy doubted he was even aware of her presence.  
  
Shell did not live, he just breathed on occasion.  
  
Missy decided this was good advice to follow.  
  
And so for a year of her life she wasted away in the little cabin Shell had in the lot of land Hogwarts had once stood on.  
  
Yes, Hogwarts was almost as dead as Snape.  
-  
Albus Dumbledore was a terribly old men by the time Hogwarts was destroyed.  
  
I suppose he sort of died with the building. All of the spirit was sucked out of him.  
  
Dumbledore does not live in the old lot of Hogwarts. He lives in a mental institution.  
  
He, too, is nothing but a shell.  
-  
  
As Missy slowly healed she began to long to be the pretty long girl of her dream. Unfortunately she had scarred her face beyond compare that day and was uglier then ever.  
  
So Missy began experimenting. She would pile layer after layer of makeup over her scars until they were not even visible.  
  
She longed to be blond haired like she had in her dreams. A bottle of hairdye soon appeared in the shower and she was now platinum.  
  
Now Lover would love her, she thought with a wry grin.  
  
Suddenly a very horrible thought struck Missy. She had forgotten what he looked like. As a matter of fact the only thing she could remember was his bright green eyes.  
  
The next day Missy returned to the cabin with green eyes.  
  
I have part of him in me now, she had thought happily.  
  
Now she was as beautiful as could be.  
  
So why didn't he come for her?  
  
Why hadn't he come for her so they could marry?  
  
Missy's mind reasoned that he must have died. Sadly she wrote this into the sick little story in her sick little mind.  
  
And so all hope was sucked out of her. She became the Missy Mister knows so well.  
  
-  
Mister was like a very old house. He was wasting away.  
  
He weighed very little now, for he had long ago ran out of money to buy his dry sandwiches.  
  
Mister was dying, plain and simple. His days flowed into each other. He wasted away.  
  
Poor Mister was as good as dead.  
  
About a month after he was fired his dull life, or living death, whichever you prefer, was interrupted by a visitor.  
  
"Mister?" asked a small feminine voice.  
  
Mister opened his unused mouth to respond with her name when he realized he did not even know it.  
  
"What IS your name?" He asked.  
  
"Whatever you want it to be."  
  
"All right then, Miss."  
  
"Ee?" She added.  
  
And so Missy was born.  
  
They made small talk and she left him, leaving him in awe.  
  
He did see her again for several long days.  
  
When she did return she had brought a small feast with her.  
  
"They" ate it. Well, Mister did.  
  
And so this pattern continued for weeks and months and even years.  
  
It was not long until he began to ache for her when she was not around. She held his heart in her hand and played with like a child with a ball.  
  
It was not long before she noticed the affection toward her, and this pleased her greatly. She soon began to flirt with him, tease him, taunt him with kisses on the cheek and hugs good-bye. One day she gave him a full out kiss which lasted one whole beautiful minute.  
  
Mister reckoned she was in love with him too.  
  
But Missy loved Lover, and Lover alone. Sometime she would close her eyes and pretend Mister was Lover, but it was all just a delusion and she knew it.  
  
But she didn't want to know it.  
-  
  
Now fateful reader, you may be wondering just where the climax of this story comes in. I will tell you this and this alone.  
  
No charade can go on forever.  
  
Yes, Missy could not continue to pretend that Mister was Lover. Soon she felt her world shatter around her. She made that mistake once again.  
  
She realized she was insane.  
  
So she decided to do something she hadn't done in ages.  
  
Tell the truth.  
  
The truth is a funny thing. people always say that they want it, but when they get it, they can't handle it.  
  
So now, dear fateful readers, I deliver you, the climax.  
  
-  
  
"Mister," She said one day, placing her hand on his arm. "I have to tell you something."  
  
Grinning widely at the touch of her hand on his arm he smiled larger and said, "Yes?"  
  
"I don't love you." She said. Of course, Missy had attended to be more tactful about this but the bluntness of her comment came easily.  
  
"What?" Said Mister, moving up on the couch in shock.  
  
"I don't love you. I never loved you. I love'd who I pretended you were. It was a boy, a boy named," She struggled to recall Lover's true name. "Potter, Harry Potter.  
  
"I pretended he was in love with me too, though I knew he wasn't. That's what love does to you, drives you crazy. I suppose you would know." Mister blushed fiercely.  
  
"I'm sorry, Mister, but I can't love you."  
  
Tears welled in Mister's eyes and he started to run. He ran all the way out of the house and toward the nearby pier.  
  
Missy flew after him, guilt swelling up inside of her.  
  
She was a fool, she had hurt him just like Harry had hurt her.  
  
-  
"Harry, I love you." She heard herself say to him.  
  
"Hermione, I could never love you, your my friend, and besides, my other best friends in love with you." Was he's insensitive reply.  
  
"Harry...."  
  
"No, Herm, I could never love you, deal with it." He had turned his back and walked away.  
  
Dammit, she had thought, if only Ron hadn't loved her.  
-  
  
Missy, or Hermione as you might better know her suddenly had a thought.  
  
Mister...was he....  
  
She ran toward the pier. She looked around desperately for him. She fun him quite easily.  
  
Floating in the water.  
  
It suddenly occurred to her that she had been a bit in love with him.  
  
But he was just a shell of a person. Practically dead. Just a shell of a person.  
  
She walked down the stairs by the pier and onto the beach. She walked close to the body. The shell.  
  
"Good-bye Ron, my dear seashell."  
  
She kissed the shell of the boy once named Ron. Yes....she thought in a daze....she had been a bit in love with him.  
  
  



End file.
